I have been working on building my back for awhile now and i have seen some results. I want to see bigger, faster results. Any help?
Thanks.
pullups
check out my post
Homework assignment: Learn the names and locations of all the muscles in the back.
Post back once you’ve learned them.
My fav back exercises:
1.)Deadlift (heavy)
2.)weighted chin-up (heavy)
3.)single arm cable row with d-hook (light paying attention to form and stretch/squeeze of back)
4.)lat pulldowns (cheat with heavy weight, or light focusing again on the sqeeze)
I’ve also found that I’ve had better results if I train for either width or thickness instead of both at the same time. Like 4-6 weeks focused on thickness, then when I switch up my routine I focus on width, etc… my .02
My back builders are heavy bent over rows, t-bar rows, dumbbell rows, chin-ups, good mornings and some deadlifts. Using loaded stretching helps, too. Actually, I relax my scapulae after every rep in a rowing exercise, hold the ensuing lat stretch for 2-3 secs and start the next rep. That works great with chin-ups, dumbell rows and t-bar rows.
The above mentioned exercises are good; so is this: Doing twice as many sets for your back as your chest is a good place to start.
[quote]sapasion wrote:
The above mentioned exercises are good; so is this: Doing twice as many sets for your back as your chest is a good place to start.[/quote]
Back before chest for sure. After all, you don’t want to be internally rotated, do you?
Weighted pullups
[quote]chef80 wrote:
I have been working on building my back for awhile now and i have seen some results. I want to see bigger, faster results. Any help?
Thanks.[/quote]
You need to give more info if you want quality advice.
How have you been working your back? Ex sets reps frequency etc.
How long is “a while”? How new to training are you? (whats your training age?) how old / heavy / tall are you?
Any pre=existing injuries / probs?
Whats your diet & sleep like?
In short put more effort into your question!
Quick question and a quick answer:
Bent rows, pullups, chinups, shrugs, rack pulls, deadlifts.
Dumbbell Rows, Barbell Rows, T-Bar Rows, Chin-ups, Pull-ups, Rack Chins, DD Cable Rows, Hammer Strength Iso-Row, Hammer-Strength High-Row, Hammer Strength Low-Row, Hammer Strength Pullover, Face Pulls, Rear Delt Flys. Don’t fear machines.
Rack Chins and Face Pulls deserve some description. Face Pulls are done for rear-delts , rhomboids, and mid-traps. Just row to your face with a triceps rope. Rack Chins are great for lat width. Use a Smith-Machine as your Chinning Bar. Put your feet up on the head of a low-incline bench. Your body should be in a V-up position. Get your training partner to put a heavy dumbbell on your lap. Do your 8-12 reps with a true 8-second negative. I’m not bullshitting you. I hate it when programs instruct you to use 4 second negatives on all the exercises. There’s no way. But you must use the slow negative in order to benefit form this exercise.
I don’t think Deadlifts and Rack Pulls actually give you that much back size. But they are necessary for back strength. If you do not include these exercises in your program, then you will have a much harder time increasing the training poundages in your other lifts.
Deads, Rack Pulls, and Heavy Shrugs are the best trap builders. People will try to tell you that Cleans, Snatches, and High-Pulls are the best trap builders but they are wrong. There is no eccentric in these Olympic lifts. Also, the shrugging of the shoulders is not used to lift the bar so much as it is used to bull the weightlifter under the bar. This is how the most efficient weightlifters utilize their traps. Sure, Olympic lifters do have good traps and thick necks, but for the amount of strength these lifters posses in their traps, those muscles are relativly small. They have only been trained for the speed. They have not been trained for size. Cleaning 405 is a superhuman feat and will give you a thick pair of traps but doing sets of shrugs with 405 can give you the same thick neck in less time and effort if hypertrophy is your goal.
If you’ve been doing nothing but vertical pulling for your back, then you should just switch to horizontal only for a bit.
Training your lower back with extensions, reverse-hypers, good-mornings, and RDLs is a good idea if you want to increase your training poundages and keep your torso strong on heavy deads, rows, and shrugs.
more info would help but in general basic moves worked for me: wide grip chins, deads, tbars, barbell rows, 1 arm dumbbell rows
I have a pretty decent back. Like many of us here, observation has shown us that those bodybuilders with the most developed backs included a large amount of exercises in their back workout routines (>3 exercises, for example). Ed Coan (powerlifter), Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman, Lee Haney, Sergio Oliva; all of these guys built barndoor backs with a large number of exercises. Check the last Jimmy Smith article on back training, and you will see he has the same observation as well.
For example, my back and rear delt routine is as follows:
Chinups
Pullover machine
Dumbbell or barbell rows
Dorian Yates Hammer Strength Row Machine
Rear delt raises
Reverse pec deck
Deadlifts
Every other week, I include negatives at the end of sets for chinups and static holds with the pullover machine and DY Row. Stretching the lats a great deal during exercises and between sets works great too.
However, I do not think you are going to see gains FAST, as you stated, unless you are on huge amounts of steroids. The natural BBer only can gain 1/4 to 1/2 lb of muscle per week, if that! So, I do not see how would you see such results in only your back in a short amount of time.
[quote]FightingScott wrote:
Dumbbell Rows, Barbell Rows, T-Bar Rows, Chin-ups, Pull-ups, Rack Chins, DD Cable Rows, Hammer Strength Iso-Row, Hammer-Strength High-Row, Hammer Strength Low-Row, Hammer Strength Pullover, Face Pulls, Rear Delt Flys. Don’t fear machines.
Rack Chins and Face Pulls deserve some description. Face Pulls are done for rear-delts , rhomboids, and mid-traps. Just row to your face with a triceps rope. Rack Chins are great for lat width. Use a Smith-Machine as your Chinning Bar. Put your feet up on the head of a low-incline bench. Your body should be in a V-up position. Get your training partner to put a heavy dumbbell on your lap. Do your 8-12 reps with a true 8-second negative. I’m not bullshitting you. I hate it when programs instruct you to use 4 second negatives on all the exercises. There’s no way. But you must use the slow negative in order to benefit form this exercise.
I don’t think Deadlifts and Rack Pulls actually give you that much back size. But they are necessary for back strength. If you do not include these exercises in your program, then you will have a much harder time increasing the training poundages in your other lifts.
Deads, Rack Pulls, and Heavy Shrugs are the best trap builders. People will try to tell you that Cleans, Snatches, and High-Pulls are the best trap builders but they are wrong. There is no eccentric in these Olympic lifts. Also, the shrugging of the shoulders is not used to lift the bar so much as it is used to bull the weightlifter under the bar. This is how the most efficient weightlifters utilize their traps. Sure, Olympic lifters do have good traps and thick necks, but for the amount of strength these lifters posses in their traps, those muscles are relativly small. They have only been trained for the speed. They have not been trained for size. Cleaning 405 is a superhuman feat and will give you a thick pair of traps but doing sets of shrugs with 405 can give you the same thick neck in less time and effort if hypertrophy is your goal.
If you’ve been doing nothing but vertical pulling for your back, then you should just switch to horizontal only for a bit.
Training your lower back with extensions, reverse-hypers, good-mornings, and RDLs is a good idea if you want to increase your training poundages and keep your torso strong on heavy deads, rows, and shrugs. [/quote]
GREAT POST!
Gerdy
[quote]Sliver wrote:
Homework assignment: Learn the names and locations of all the muscles in the back.
Post back once you’ve learned them.[/quote]
Ye!! Physiology/kinesiology 101 is the BEST way to learn what exercises do wha, and why!
Good Man!
Joe
nothing is going to compare to the deadlift man.
[quote]LiveFromThe781 wrote:
nothing is going to compare to the deadlift man.[/quote]
The Deadlift is probably not the best exercise for bodybuilding purposes. It also cannot be performed as frequently with heavy weights as Rows and Chins can.
If you had one guy do nothing but Pull-ups and another guy do nothing but Deadlifts, I don’t really know who would have the more impressive back. I can only guess that the Pull-up guy would be a better climber and the deadlifter would run faster and be able to pick up larger stuff.
But if I were following a bodybuilding template that included squats, and my only interest was aesthetics, the deadlift would not be the staple of my workout. I would favor Chins and Dumbbell Rows.
For the record, I deadlift…Sunday.
Me too… I had good results with the 1arm DB row - once i upped the weight and fixed my form.
Also the bent bar row.
I love shrugs of all types - my workout at the moment is:
Hammer Shrugs x3
Upright Rows x3
Armpit shrugs Or DB Shrugs x3
I know its traps, but that counts!!! Kinda…